High life in Dubai

Grammy-winning music producer Dallas Austin is on his way home to the United States after being pardoned in Dubai for a drugs offence. Thirty-four-year-old Austin, who has worked with Madonna, TLC, Michael Jackson, and others, was arrested on May 19 when he arrived at Dubai airport with 1.26 grammes of cocaine "and other illegal substances" in his possession.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), of which Dubai forms a part, operates a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs. Most of the time, anyway. "There is a red line for the drug cases - between four years and life in jail for having or trading drugs, even if the amount is very little," according to one local lawyer. If the authorities had wanted to be really awkward, they could have charged Austin with smuggling the drugs, in which case the death penalty would have applied.

In the event, he pleaded guilty to possession and received the minimum sentence of four years, which was followed a few hours later by a royal pardon.

Coverage by American news agencies has been largely sympathetic to Austin. Associated Press said he looked "pale and worried" in court while Cox News talked about the "daunting prospect" of jail. Back at Austin's home in Atlanta, R&B singer Monica said she could "not wait to put my arms around his neck", Cox News continued.

Personally, I don't think imprisonment is the way to deal with drug issues but I find Austin's privileged treatment rather sickening. He had no fewer than five lawyers working on his case, including Joel Katz, a hot-shot attorney from Atlanta whose clients include many celebrities. According to a news website in the UAE, American VIPs were also in touch with "senior figures" in Dubai "to try to ensure lenient treatment".

Dubai, meanwhile, is trying to project itself as a modern, western-oriented playground for the rich, and the last thing it wants is a celebrity with more money than sense - just the sort of people it is trying to attract - languishing in one of its jails. At the same time, in common with many of the Arab states, it tries to uphold "traditional morality" and keep religious conservatives happy by imposing draconian laws that are widely ignored.

Ultimately, this results in one law for the locals and another for foreigners - or rather, two different laws for foreigners depending on whether they are westerners (and therefore to be treated with care) or foreigners from poor countries (in which case they don't matter and can be treated appallingly).

I am also uneasy about the use of pardons. We have seen a lot of these in Saudi Arabia recently, where loony judges sentence people for bizarre crimes and the king then short-circuits the system by issuing a pardon. This tends to happen most with cases that attract publicity in the west - such as that of a teacher who got into trouble for talking about alcohol in a chemistry lesson.

The real need, though, is to develop workable systems that don't require constant intervention from the head of state - sensible laws, a genuinely independent judiciary and court procedures that meet international standards.

Resorting to pardons merely helps to perpetuate systems that are accommodating if you're rich and famous, but hopelessly arbitrary if you have no connections or clout.

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